Saturday, 1 October 2011

VIII by HM Castor Blog Tour

Hey, welcome to my stop on the VIII by Harriet Castor blog tour! It's especially exciting today, as it's release day, and I'm lucky enough to be celebrating with a Q&A with Harriet herself! The answers are great, and the book is so good, so if you're a historical fiction fan (and even if you're not), read on! :D

__________

Hi Harriet, welcome to
Cheezyfeet Books! Tell us a little bit about yourself!

Hi Cheezyfeet! Many
thanks for having me here. Well, I’m a Tudor history obsessive, trained dance
notator and Fred Astaire fan. (Erm, does that sound like a weird combination?) I’ve
had more than 40 children’s books published, plus 1 adult novel, but VIII is my first YA novel. And I’m so
excited about it!

Why did you decide to
become an author? Was it always a dream of yours, or did a story idea just pop
into you head and you just had to write it down?

I’ve always loved writing
stories, but I wrote my first published book almost by accident. I was 12 years
old, it was the summer holidays and I was bored. I decided to write a story
(about our family cat), and then, once it was finished, I decided to send it to
a publisher – just for fun. My mum was a bit alarmed – she warned me it would get
sent straight back, and didn’t want me to be heartbroken. But I was immensely
lucky because it never did come back! Instead it was published as ‘Fat Puss and
Friends’, by Viking Kestrel and Puffin. It took me a very long time to realise
that this doesn’t happen to everyone when they’re 12.

What gave you the idea
for VIII? Have you always had an
interest in history, especially Henry VIII?

Absolutely. I’ve loved
history – and especially Tudor history – since I was at primary school. My
elder sister was really into it, and she was a big influence on me (you may
have heard of her – she’s the historian and broadcaster Helen Castor, so the
enthusiasm has lasted for both of us). I studied history at university, and
since then I’ve written a lot of non-fiction history books for children. I’ve
known for a long time that I wanted to write historical novels, but it has
taken me many years to summon up the courage. Training as a historian teaches
you the vital importance of getting things as accurate as possible, and that
can feel pretty daunting in combination with the creative leap that a novel
requires.

As for Henry VIII… for
many years, if you’d asked me, I would have said I was more interested in the
people around Henry than in the man himself. I loved reading about his wives,
his children… but the longer I skirted round him, the more I came to realise
that he was like a spider at the middle of this web of incredible stories – and
the more I became fascinated by him.

The idea for writing this
specific book came from the fact that, though Henry is such a well-known figure
– he’s featured in countless TV shows, films and of course books – I’d never
found anything that convincingly explained to me why he took the extraordinary decisions he did. He seemed such a
mass of contradictions: passionate and yet cold; sentimental but cruel; highly
intelligent and domineering, yet strangely child-like and insecure too. One
night, when watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors, I found myself throwing cushions at the telly, yelling,
“No, he wasn’t like that! That wasn’t how it was at all!” All right, I thought.
Pull yourself together. You clearly have something to say, here. And shouting
at the telly really doesn’t help. That night I decided I had better start
writing!

How much of VIII is based on historical fact and how
much is fictional?

I did a huge amount of
research for the book and I’ve used as many known facts as I possibly can.
Being faithful to the evidence is immensely important to me. However, the known
facts can only take you so far. There are gaps that, as a novelist, you need to
fill in. For example, in the surviving documents Henry is very difficult to
‘see’ during his teenage years. He was kept under close wraps by his father,
and we don’t know very many details about what he was like, what he
experienced, how he felt. However, some of the details that we do know are
intriguing… for example, it was said that on one occasion his father had to be
physically restrained from attacking him. Just turn this over in your mind for
a moment. It’s a compelling image – and pretty shocking. It’s well known that
Henry and his father were chalk and cheese, as personalities. But a detail like
that… well, from my point of view, needing as I did to reconstruct Henry’s
relationship with his father, that detail was dynamite.

As a novelist it’s vital
to remember that your job is not to produce an exhaustive textbook (in my case on
Henry’s reign). That’s not a novel! My aim was to climb inside Henry and look
out through his eyes. I wanted the reader to identify with him, to see him as a
loveable young boy, a feisty, troubled teenager, a golden, athletic 17-year-old
king… and to find themselves understanding him, rooting for him, even as he
begins to slide – despite his best intentions, despite his dreams of glory –
towards evil. I am interested in his psychology – and it is an intense,
thrilling story of idealism, the struggle for perfection, and eventual psychological
meltdown.

No one can know what it
felt like to be Henry – no one now, and no one (other than himself) during his
lifetime. It’s territory that academic historians cannot touch. But the attempt
to understand why people did what they did is, in my view, vital to our
understanding of the past – and of the present, of ourselves, too. This is what
a novel can explore. And what’s more, it’s a fantastic story!

How did you come up with
the fictional aspects of the story?

Everything came from the
research, first and foremost – from the known facts. I was certain from my
research, for example, that Henry sent Anne Boleyn to the block knowing that
she was innocent of the crimes she was charged with. Yet it seemed also true
that he believed in her guilt in a wider sense – in the way, you might say,
that Stalin believed in the guilt of his victims, so that it didn’t matter what
specific crimes they were charged with. Right there I had an intriguing
conundrum. How does that kind of thinking work, inside Henry’s head? I read
psychology books, and spent hours talking to a psychotherapist and a Jungian
analyst. Through that process I pieced together, I feel, a truly plausible
psychological journey. It’s one of the aspects of the book that I’m proudest
of.

Any writing plans for the
future? More YA historical novels or something completely new?

More YA historical
novels! These are what I’ve always wanted to write, so it’s a wonderful
feeling. I’m working now on a novel about Henry’s two daughters, who become two
queens: Mary I and Elizabeth I. I’m focussing on their relationship as sisters:
how did they feel about one another? What’s especially compelling about it is
that Mary and Elizabeth had so much shared experience: each was born a
princess, the heir to the throne; each was then declared illegitimate and lost
her title and status. Each lost her mother in heart-rending circumstances
caused directly by her father. Yet these two girls had radically different
personalities, and reacted to their traumatic experiences in dramatically
different ways. It’s every bit as fascinating a story as the story of VIII.

Thanks for stopping by
Harriet! Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

You’re welcome! I’d like
to say that I’d be really interested to hear readers’ responses to VIII. Authors don’t know what readers
think of their books unless readers tell them – and it’s really important to
me! You can contact me through my website – www.hmcastor.com - or find me on
Facebook. I’m on twitter too: @HMCastor. Please come and say hi!

Finally, Cheezyfeet, I’d
like to say thanks so much for letting me visit. You’ve asked fantastic
questions and it was fun answering them. I love this website and it’s an honour
to be here!

__________

Thanks Harriet, that was awesome! If that hasn't convinced you to read the book, you can go and read my review here, or if you want to order it, you can do so here, at amazon.co.uk! :D Thanks for stopping by guys, and here are the links to everyone else on the tour!

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I love YA books, and I read and review them here at Cheezyfeet Books. If it's YA - I'll read it! You can find me on Twitter: @CheezyfeetBooks or email me at: bella DOT heavens AT gmail DOT com. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you come back soon! For more info please visit my About & Review Policy page.